StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Cactus Truck hitting Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center on Sunday, November 30

Prickly and persistent, loud and as unsubtle as an 18-wheeler careening down a stretch of bad road at 70 miles an hour, the music of Cactus Truck certainly fits their name. Their balls-to-the-wall skronk also seems like an appropriate soundtrack for a state of emergency, either real or imagined, and so the upcoming visit by the Amsterdam-based trio on Sunday, November 30 to Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center seems rather timely.

Comprised of saxophonist John Dikeman (who's originally from the USA, born in Wyoming), guitarist/bassist Jasper Stadhouders, and drummer Onno Govaert, Cactus Truck was named "discovery of the year" in 2011 by the UK music magazine The Wire. Their first album Brand New For China! was called "brutal, furious and uncompromising" by AllAboutJazz.com's Eyal Hareuveni, and has evoked repeated comparisons to the electric music of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann with Last Exit, Hairy Bones and Trio Roma, and to experimental/noise groups such as The Thing and Zu.

You can sample their sonic mayhem in the first track up above, an excerpt from a performance in April 2014 at the alternative music venue Occii in Amsterdam.

After the jump, there are three excerpts from a 2013 show at Autonoom Centrum, which translates as "autonomous center," a sort of collectively managed community gathering place, performance space, and bookstore. (There are several venues in the Netherlands using the designation, including in one in Amsterdam, but it's not clear which one this is from the notes on the video.)

After that, it's a piece called "Magnum Eyebrow," recorded in 2013 at 12 Points, a festival in Dublin, Ireland for young European jazz artists.

Last but not least, the connection with 1960s free jazz is made a bit more explicit by a clip of Dikeman and Govaert performing Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" in 2012 at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam.

Tickets for Cactus Truck at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center will be $7 at the door. Saxophonist Dave Stone's Free Jazz Unit will open the show.

You can see the rest of today's clips after the jump....